December 8, 2020
Hassan Riggs
Breathe New Life Into Dead Leads
The dreaded unresponsive lead, we all have them but what on Earth do we do with them?
You already paid for it so deleting it would just feel like throwing money away.
Besides, you know that there’s a chance that these leads can still turn into business. You just need to figure out how to turn unresponsive leads into active prospects again. Then you take that swath of dead leads and turn it into a gold mine.
But how, how do we breathe new life into these leads?
This is a question we asked ourselves at Smart Alto when we realized many of our customers would occasionally upload a ton of leads at once and they were all backdated from a few months old to a few years old.
Our customers were counting on us to revive their dead leads so we needed to come up with a formula that could do that reliably.
Nowadays we have just the right recipe for turning dead leads into 15-Minute phone appointments and we’re the only ISA provider in Real Estate willing to share that recipe with you.
(Steal our screenshots, examples and templates from our blog post 2 Things You Need To Get A 90% Appointment Show Up Rate With Real Estate Leads).
Why?
Because Real Estate agents aren’t lazy, you’re not going to hire us because you don’t want to do the work outlined in this article. On the contrary, you’re going to use this method yourself and get so busy that you just don’t have the time to do it anymore.
That’s why agents hire us because you’re busy! So let’s dive into our recipe for converting unresponsive leads!
Ok so we’ve all got dead leads, that’s just a fact of life. It’s unavoidable, right? Death, taxes, and unresponsive leads am I right?
But it’s important to be a little self-reflective here and ask if we’ve really exhausted our chances with the leads.
Full disclosure, I know some of my “dead leads” we marked dead after making just one contact attempt.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you just have to own it.
Besides, there are still agents out there who buy leads and make zero contact attempts.
Why does diligence even matter with online leads?
Speed To Lead is all that matters, right?
Not quite.
If the first most impactful contact attempt you’ll make is the one you make in the first 5 minutes then what’s the second most impactful contact attempt?
According to a recent study, the more contact attempts you make with a lead the greater your chances of connecting.
Essentially, you’re “dead leads” aren’t truly dead until you’ve made at least 6 attempts.
By giving every lead in your “dead leads” category another 4 or 5 attempts, you’ll be able to engage more unresponsive leads than you can just by making the first attempt with brand new leads.
A big part of reviving dead leads is making it easy for them to engage with you. This means tailoring your method of contact (and even the questions you ask but more on that next).
In order to make it easy for leads to respond, you have to meet them where they’re at.
Imagine sending a postcard and asking for a response. In order to reply, the lead would need to get a pad and pen, write their response, go to the store to buy an envelope, buy a stamp, address the envelope, put the stamp on, and finally place it in the mailbox.
Crazy to think that’s how some agents in the business today got their start...
So you’re going to need to choose a follow-up mode that you’re lead already has, enjoys using, and easy for them to engage with you on.
Two options really stand out here but one is a clear winner:
Phone Calls: Phone calls can be a bit of a pain honestly, people aren’t always available to speak on the phone. I think phone calls are turning into the new door knocking, unless I’m expecting you, you’re really just being intrusive.
Not to mention, they may not even know you’ve called. With all these unwanted robocalls bombarding consumers, most phones now allow you to Silence Unknown Callers. That means calls from unknown numbers are silenced and sent to voicemail.
Text/SMS: Since spam calls have pretty much destroyed phone prospecting text messaging has emerged as the Gold Standard in lead conversion. Nearly everyone has their phone on them all the time and can have a discreet text conversation whenever they want, it’s not like showing up unannounced. You’re simply dropping a question that they can respond to whenever they get a second.
Step 1 of converting unresponsive leads:
Turn them into responsive leads, duh.
Seriously, the very first objective you have with your dead leads is simply to get them to respond. That’s the first major threshold with any lead actually and it will help you build momentum to gradually increase your channel of communication.
The best way to meet that very first goal is to ask frictionless questions, these are questions that anyone can answer at any time without even thinking.
Think questions like:
They might not seem like much but these are powerful questions because they’re great at producing a response.
And they are a peak example of frictionless questions because you don’t need to think hard to answer them and when you do answer them, you don’t have to do much work at all.
If you ask someone how many bathrooms they need, all they have to do is to tap their phone twice to respond. One tap to select the number of bathrooms they need and a second tap to hit send.
And just like that, in two keyboard strokes, they are no longer an unresponsive lead.
Like we said from the start if you’re a good agent and you know how to communicate well, there’s nothing stopping you from taking this process and using it yourself.
And that’s exactly what we’re hoping you’ll do.
Look, Smart Alto really can be a huge boost in conversion for most agents but at the end of the day, we don’t work for lazy agents.
We take your leads and turn them into 15-minute phone appointments, you do the rest.
So go ahead and use our framework for reviving old leads to make yourself so busy that you just can’t possibly be the one managing your incoming lead flow.
We built Smart Alto to deliver high-quality results for our high producing agents.
Our inside sales agents (real humans by the way) use text messages that connect and convert better than anyone else in the market and deliver results in the form of 15-minute phone appointments that help our clients get into relationships faster and close more deals.
But if you’re already feeling like 24hrs just isn’t enough time in a day and you want to leverage some of the best ISAs in the industry. Book a demo with Smart Alto today.
The Smart Alto Appointment Setting System guarantees your team never misses another sales opportunity.